


October 24: woman like me

by 96enox



Series: to a boy i love right now [2]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 12:20:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17467439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/96enox/pseuds/96enox
Summary: So apparently the first date didn't go well. Now what?





	October 24: woman like me

_October 24_

She breezes around Seungkwan, a constant whirlwind every morning before her 10 o’clock class. She snags her toast and quickly butters it. While munching, she goes to the fridge and scans it for her lunch for the day. Seungkwan had cooked the night before since Hansol and Mingyu had come over for dinner. Since the pool game, she’d seen more of Mingyu, which was nice.

She quickly tosses a layer of rice and then chicken into a container. She deems that sufficient for her break between lecture and lab. “Is Hansol taking you to school?” she asks as she heads to their dining table to collect her things together.

“No, we’re going to meet at the bus stop,” Seungkwan says. He washes his bowl from his cereal. When the water stops, she can feel his eyes on her. Meeting his gaze, she finds Seungkwan tilting his head in concern.

Sighing, her gaze falls back to her backpack. She pulls her toast out of her mouth to ask, “What, Seungkwanie?”

“Are we really not going to talk about your date?” Seungkwan demands.

The date had been last week. It had been… awkward, to say the least. Hansol had warned her in advance that Jihoon wasn’t much of a talker, but also didn’t like when people talked too much.

“There’s this dance major that he complains about _all_ the time,” Hansol had told her. “He just goes on about himself and the things he’s done.”

But she’s a talker in one-on-one situations, so she had found herself being self-conscious about how much she was talking. When she would ask Jihoon questions just to get him to loosen up, as Hansol had also warned her that he wasn’t a huge people person, he would give her stunted answers. By the time she’d had to leave for class, she was unsure if Jihoon just found her uninteresting or was terrified of her.

“I’m surprised that you haven’t heard about it through the grape vine yet,” she comments with the last bit of toast in her right cheek. She takes her water bottle to Seungkwan to fill as she disappears into her bedroom. She searches for her headphones before remembering she’d tucked them behind the door along with other school stuff when Hansol had arrived last night.

She wraps the cord around her fingers and stuffs it into the front pocket of her backpack.

“Lab coat?” Seungkwan reminds her as he closes the water bottle lid, tightening it to make sure it doesn’t leak.

“Right!” She hurries back into the bedroom and plucks it off the back of the door.

“Okay, you have all your stuff,” he asks as he passes the water bottle and food across the counter. He added an apple and a tangerine to her stack of food. “You need to eat more,” he insists when he catches her expression.

She smirks. “Okay, I will.”

“Now that you have all your stuff,” he tries again, “can you talk to me? You haven’t said anything about it.”

“Because…” She’d been avoiding discussing it, because Jihoon had been her first date in a while. Mostly because she hadn’t found anyone who interested her enough, and because a lot of the people in her biology major were either so focused on school they couldn’t see anyone or were already with somebody. It didn’t bother her, but maybe she’d had too high hopes for Jihoon. The date hadn’t been bad, but it wasn’t anything to write home about either.

“I don’t know,” she mutters. She zips up her bag and hikes it over one shoulder. It’s heavy, as it always is. She sets it by the door and then hops onto the counter as she’s got a few minutes before she needs to head down to catch the bus to school. “Not every date can be a good date, I guess.”

“Jihoon hyung seemed to like you though,” Seungkwan presses. He turns slightly leaning his hip against the counter, arms crossed over his chest.

“I know, but it was just…” She shrugs, shaking her head.” Awkward. Like we had nothing to talk about.”

“ _You_? Had nothing to talk about?” Seungkwan tips his head back in disbelief, his jaw open. “Noona, we spend four hours talking at the table when we should be studying.”

“I know, but I _know_ you,” she argues.

“The first night we met we talked for five hours on the couch at Jeonghan hyung’s party?”

She sighs, running her hand through her hair. “Hansol told me that Jihoon isn’t much of a talker and that he doesn’t really like people. I was grasping at straws the entire date.”

“Do you like him though?”

She shrugs. “I wouldn’t say no to a second date, but he hasn’t texted me since last week.”

“Nothing?” Seungkwan frowns. “That’s weird.”

“I don’t think he liked me very much,” she admits.

“What makes you think that?”

She checks her watch and slides off the counter. Scooping her bag onto her shoulder, she answers, “How he didn’t seem interested in the conversation? It was mostly just the vibe I got off him.”

Seungkwan nods his head thoughtfully. “Well, other fish in the sea, right?”

She smiles back at him. “Of course. Let me know when you find me another one.”

 

“She thinks he doesn’t like her!” Seungkwan exclaims as he and Hansol climb onto the bus. Their classes don’t start until 1.

Hansol pops a chip into his mouth and holds the bag out to Seungkwan who takes one. “That’s weird. Hyung seemed into her.” They carefully make their way to the back of the bus.

“Finally get what happened out of her and it turns out to be the exact opposite of what you’ve been telling me,” Seungkwan pouts, falling into the seat closest to the window. “Here I thought she was hiding a secret boyfriend from me.”

“I was just telling you what Gyu was telling me. He spends so much time with Jihoon hyung, maybe he was getting subtext.”

“And then getting it wrong?” Seungkwan demands. “If hyung was interested, why wouldn’t he text her?”

Hansol shrugs, unconcerned. “He’s probably nervous.”

“She doesn’t know that.”

“Well you could tell her.”

“Ah, ah. You know I don’t like to meddle.”

Hansol snorts, a smirk on his face. “Meddle might as well be your middle name, Boo Seungkwan.”

Seungkwan frowns. “Well, noona wouldn’t like me to meddle.”

“Noona’s trained you well,” Hansol chuckles. He tips the chip bag back, munching on the crumbs before crumpling the bag in his hand. “But she would probably want you to meddle in this situation.”

Seungkwan blinks in surprise at this knowledge. Hansol had suggested that Seungkwan room with her, because they were so similar. He claimed that she just complained about how much of a slob he was and to go find her a better roommate. As they’d been best friends since they were in high school, he wasn’t offended and brought her Boo Seungkwan.

And while Hansol has never steered him wrong in his interactions with her, Seungkwan has a feeling that meddling would make her upset.

“You know him better,” Seungkwan says. “Find out what’s going on.”

Hansol doesn’t argue with him and shrugs. “Okay.”

 

Late that night, Hansol, Wonwoo, Mingyu and Jihoon are all holed up in the recording studio. On top of classes, they have their final project to complete. They were supposed to make a 3-track EP and Jihoon had made plenty of melodies, but they were struggling with lyrics.

Hansol sprawls on the couch while they take a break from tossing ideas back and forth. “Hyung,” he says, lobbing a balled up paper with garbage lyrics on it at Jihoon. “You never really told me what happened on that coffee date with noona.”

Immediately, Jihoon’s ears go red. He turns in his chair to throw the paper into the bin. Mingyu watches Jihoon carefully, but says nothing.

“It was fine,” Jihoon answers, sipping his water.

If Hansol goes back to Seungkwan with that, he’ll never hear the end of it. “Fine?” He swings his legs down to the floor. “Noona wouldn’t talk about it either. Seungkwanie thinks it’s ‘cause you two are dating.”

Jihoon sputters, which causes a bit of water to dribble down his chin. He uses the back of his hand to dry it. “Dating? No.”

“So how did it go then?” Wonwoo asks, spinning in his chair. “You haven’t told me anything about it either.”

Mingyu’s gaze falls and Hansol slowly sits up. He looks between Mingyu and Jihoon. Jihoon’s ears are so red, Hansol figures they’re probably burning. “What happened?” He feels himself getting protective. “Did you offend her?”

“No!” Jihoon protests. He buries his face in his hands.

Mingyu glances over at him and then begins explaining. “Apparently,” he slowly brings his gaze to Hansol, “apparently he completely froze.”

“I couldn’t come up with _anything_ to say to her.” Jihoon throws his head back against the rolling chair. He actually causes the chair to roll back a bit. “She kept trying to talk to me and I couldn’t…” He motions with his hands the action of things coming out of his mouth. “Nothing.”

Hansol should have expected that to happen, but hadn’t. “Noona usually talks a lot when someone else can’t come up with anything. She’s good at that.”

Jihoon tips his head back, staring at the ceiling. “It was like she wanted me to fill some of the silence too, so she just… went quiet and I wanted the earth to swallow me. I felt so stupid.”

“Have you texted her again?” Wonwoo asks. “The first date is usually awkward.”

“She hurried off so fast; I didn’t think she wanted to see me again,” Jihoon grumbles.

“Hyung, you finally find a girl shorter than you who _also_ agreed to go on a date with you and you didn’t _text her again_?” Mingyu demands, jumping to his feet. The short stature jab is said to fire Jihoon up. When Mingyu throws the pad of paper at Jihoon, who catches it in shock; that seems to have more effect. “Noona is so much fun and your type. I can’t believe you haven’t texted her!”

“My type? All I could think about was that she’s super smart and I just… write music. That’s all I know about her! I was going in blind!” Jihoon huffs.

“That’s the point of a date. To learn about the other person,” Wonwoo points out. “What did she say?”

Jihoon shrugs. “She talked about how she knew you,” he says to Hansol. “Then she talked about moving out of her house to be closer to school, how she lives with Seungkwan now instead of you.”

“She was probably trying to find something in common with you, so you would talk,” Wonwoo explains. “You said she asked you questions. Did you respond?”

“If you didn’t, hyung, I swear to God,” Mingyu groans, collapsing onto the couch again.

“Of course I answered; I’m not an idiot.”

“Did you give her Jihoon answers or actual answers?” Hansol asks.

Jihoon’s brow furrows. “How are those different?”

Hansol explains Jihoon answers as being court, a little harsh, no detail at all. “Noona likes actual answers. She wants conversation like this.” He motions between the two of them.

“I can’t do that with people I don’t know,” Jihoon sighs.

“You should just text the woman,” Wonwoo insists. “You don’t have to be 100% comfortable. But if you’re interested in her, go for it. Maybe it didn’t go so bad on her end.”

 

After she steps out of the shower, her towel around her shoulders, she sits at the dining table. Her inorganic chemistry notes are spread out in front of her, but her phone lighting up catches her attention instead. At 1 in the morning, she hadn’t really been expecting anyone to text her. Hansol doesn’t tend to message her after midnight and her school friends only really text when they were studying for tests, which they aren’t.

When she checks who the message is from, she nearly drops the phone on the table.

 

**Jihoon (1:08)**

     Hey, are you up?

 

She purses her lips, unsure of how to answer. Slowly, she types out that she is.

Suddenly, he’s calling.

“Hello?” she answers.

“You going to bed soon?” he asks.

“I just got out of the shower.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah.”

There’s silence for a long time and she squirms in her chair. What is she supposed to say? “Uhm, Jihoon?”

“Yeah?”

“Why are you calling me?”

“I…” He grumbles something under his breath that she can’t hear. “Are you cool with just talking for a while?”

She blinks in surprise at this question. “I guess.” She pauses. “Is there anything in particular you wanted to talk about?”

“I did want to answer some of the questions you asked me last week.”

This piques her interest. She puts Jihoon on speakerphone and rests it on the table. “Can you still hear me?”

“Yeah.” Jihoon is quiet for a while and then every question she’d asked him comes with an elaborate answer. It’s embellished and long, each answer taking at least four or five minutes for him to answer. And it isn’t lost on her that he remembers _every single question._

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do in school, but I had a friend who thought that I should pursue music production. I’ve auditioned for companies, actually got into one, but the training was gruelling. I don’t think I’d want to be the idol, but I really enjoy producing the music.”

“I’d love to hear something you’ve made one day,” she says, meaning every word. Jihoon hasn’t skimped on any details tonight.

“Maybe next time we’re on campus at the same time,” he promises. There’s a small pause before, “What’s your schedule like tomorrow?”

“I have back to back labs,” she sighs. “But if you’re on campus after 5:30, I’m free.”

Jihoon hums. “I should be on campus still. We’re working on our final project all the time.”

“Are you on campus _now_?” she demands.

Jihoon chuckles. “No, no. I called when I was leaving. I just got into bed.”

She sighs contentedly. The conversation had gone better than she expected. When she checks the time, it’s nearly 3. “Can I ask you something else?” There’s no answer, but she’s learned over the course of the conversation that no answer usually means yes with Jihoon. “Why did you do this?”

She hears rustling in the background as he rolls around in his bed. “I… I was so awkward on our date that I think you might have gotten the impression that I didn’t like you or you did something wrong.”

She hums her agreement.

“And I don’t want you to think that. So I thought if I didn’t have to see you that it would be easier to give you all my answers.”

“Oh.” The phrasing is disappointing.

“Not that I don’t want to see you!” Jihoon exclaims. “It’s just… I see you and I get really nervous. And I find talking to people… hard.”

This lightens her mood a little. “Oh.” Maybe she should offer something up since he’s put so much effort in. “I thought that I had come off too pushy or overbearing. Hansol said you didn’t like when people talked a lot, but then you weren’t talking _at all_ and I felt like I was being annoying.”

“No!” Jihoon grumbles, “Did he tell you about Chan?”

“Who’s Chan?”

“This dance prodigy. He’s young, really young. Younger than Hansol. He drives me insane.”

“Hansol didn’t tell me who it was, just that there was a dance major you didn’t like because he talked about himself a lot.”

“That really only applies to that kid,” Jihoon informs her. “But for the record, I respect him. He can just be too much.”

Chuckling, she suggests, “What if I tell you what I like and don’t like and you do the same, hmm?”

If voices could smile, she swears that Jihoon’s was. “I like that idea.”


End file.
